I recently visited India for a meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society. I was installed as the new president of the Society—glorious. A liberal Chinese friend gave me a queenly tiara—as a joke, because true liberals do not approve of the inherited hierarchy of queens or kings or aristocrats. The original point of the Liberty Movement since 1776 was to overturn all that. On an off day from the conference, we visited glorious castles and the super-glorious Taj Mahal. The sights stirred in us the reflection that liberalism does not approve of taxing or enslaving tens of thousands of peasants to service the power and vanity of kings.
And yet modern states now tax and enslave us to serve the power and the vanity of our present rulers. The rulers tell us that it’s for our own good, and after all, we do from time to time vote them in. But let me ask you: Is it for your good that Brazil maintains a big military, which sometimes seizes the state, and anyway protects you only from Paraguay? Some people get nice jobs in the military, but the rest of you pay. Is it for your good that the state erects protectionist tariffs so that you can’t buy foreign stuff at low prices? Some people get higher prices for their Brazilian-made stuff, but the rest of you pay.
At the conference, I got into a dispute with Prime Minister Modi’s chief economic advisor, who chaired a session about the balance between state and private action in the economy. It irritated me that he had come to a conference of true liberals to claim that private markets have many 'imperfections,' and therefore the state, which of course is perfect, should intervene. I’ve told you, and told him, that the claim is a scientific fairy tale.
Nonetheless, India since Singh and now Modi has become much more liberal in its economy than it was under the dismal socialism of 1947-1991. As a result, its real per-person GDP has increased by 300 percent. Brazil’s has increased by only 50 percent. In 1991 India’s income was less than 7 percent of Brazil’s, but now is 23 percent.
Please, please, my beloved Brazilians: stop electing statists.
Weekly column in Folha de São Paulo, Brazil
Translated into Portuguese for the newspaper.